Help your child to talk

Do be patient – The process is gradual and may seem slow.

Words may be unclear and your child may stumble or hesitate.

This is quite normal.

Learning to talk is exciting for children and parents.  The process starts right after birth.  It should be fun for your child, family and friends.  But it is not necessarily easy.  The process of talking involves listening, understanding, thinking, wanting and needing to speak, and being able to coordinate all the right muscles.

Babies start communicating as soon as they are born.  To begin with, this is about their physical needs but it is not long before they are using eye contact and facial expressions to communicate.  Gradually they learn to control these skills and recognise when other people are communicating with them.

These early skills support how children communicate and develop language late on.  The more you interact with your child, the quicker they are likely to pick up language and speech skills.  All children are different and develop at different rates.  The vast majority of children will learn to speak but it is possible to make it easier for them. 

Top talking tips

1. Listen to your baby and notice how he or she is trying to communicate with you.

2. Talk about what he or she is trying to do.

3. Have fun with songs and nursery rhymes and read to him or her.  The more your child hears you doing this the more he or she is likely to join in.

4. Children learn to speak by listening to and imitating others around them. Don’t fall into the trap of always quizzing your child.  They don’t learn by being questioned.

5. Children tend to pick up words and speech in the same way but some are slower than others.

6. Consider how your child mixes with others, how they play, their understanding, how they speak, what they say and how well they are able to express what they want to say.

7. Early language skills are linked to early reading skills.   If your child is having difficulty with one they will often have difficulty with the other.

8. Children who learn two languages together in their early years sometimes confuse the two and seem to have poorer language skills in one language.  The important thing is to look at their skills across both languages.  Most children will catch up and there is evidence they learn to read quicker later on.

Baby and Me is the first parenting DVD to be narrated in 3 languages, Arabic, Sylheti, and English, helping parents to form a closer relationship with their babies from birth. Hollywood actress Olivia Williams gave her support by kindly narrating the English version.

Baby and Me was inspired by Speech and Language Therapist, Liz Lowton and Family Psychotherapist Yvonne Bailey-Smith (from Church Street Sure Start Local Programme), who work with multicultural families in the city of Westminster, London.

“As practitioners working within Sure Start we are all working at some level with the adult/child interaction. If you can get it right at the beginning, this can have long term benefits. When we looked at what visual information was available for families, we found that there was nothing which properly reflected the community in which we work. Our experiences as practitioners are that sometimes parents are not aware of the different abilities of very young babies. Such lack of knowledge can lead to even less interaction where there’s a child with special needs.  This video shows a range of parent/carers being the experts in positive and responsive interactions with their babies. A number of the mothers in film are women who experienced pre and postnatal depression. One of the benefits of Sure Start is that it is able to a flexible and holistic approach in its work with families. The team is made up made up of a variety of health and other professionals who work closely with other local agencies, pooling  knowledge and resources in order to effectively meet families needs. “ Liz Lowton

Filmed and produced by Clive and Helen Dorman of The Children’s Project and authors of The Social Toddler.
“Face-to-face ‘chats’ with babies are essential in developing language skills and promoting emotional health. Baby and Me contains important messages for non English-speaking parents living in this country and reflects the diversity of a modern UK. We have already had enquiries for Baby and Me to be made available in Polish and Portuguese.“ Clive Dorman
 
If you would like a review copy please email

Janet has written a lovely article on this subject, available HERE.

The Challenging Behaviour Foundation wants to see children and adults with severe learning disabilities, who are described as having challenging behaviour, having the same life opportunities as everyone else, including home life, education and leisure.

Families caring for sons/daughters with severe learning disabilities can now receive individual telephone support around understanding and managing challenging behaviour for the cost of a local call.

Some children (and adults) with severe learning disabilities typically display behaviour which may put themselves or others at risk, or which may prevent the use of community facilities or an ordinary home life. This behaviour may be in the form of aggression, self-injury, stereotyped behaviour or disruptive and destructive behaviours. Whilst anyone may at times display challenging behaviour, the work of the Challenging Behaviour Foundation is aimed at helping those with severe learning disabilities. The Challenging Behaviour Foundation defines severe learning disability as a developmental disability when individuals have either no speech or limited communication and require support with daily living skills such as dressing and eating.

Families experiencing these issues can now access individual information and support from the Challenging Behaviour Foundation Family Support Worker on 0845 602 7885.

Register for new service from Family Fund.

The Family Fund is launching 'Family Fund Extra' during October and is calling on families with disabled children to register their interest. Family Fund Extra is a separate scheme from their grant making programme and aims to help families make their money go further. It will offer a variety of discounted goods and services like electrical products and holidays. It will also allow supporters of Family Fund to make a difference to disabled children through donations and 'donate as you shop' opportunities.

Anyone caring for a child or young person up to the age of 25 years old who would like to benefit from the discounts and services Family Fund Extra will offer, should register now at Web: http://www.familyfundextra.co.uk

The Family Fund Comet gift card is a first step towards the fully-fledged Family Fund Extra and is already up and running. Web: http://tinyurl.com/667tbva

For more information contact the family fund. Tel: 0845 1304542
Email:

Sparklebox is a free website full of games, activites and educational activties for children at Key Stage 1 and 2, which can be downloaded and printed off to use.  Click the link below to have a look

 http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/

Below is a list of books from Amazon which are particuarly relevant to Parents